Chapter 86 Lachlan
Lachlan
Lachlan should have known.
But he was thinking about the envelope he’d left on the kitchen table—about standing on a cliff’s edge, looking down to where two orange caps floated in the sea. He should have seen it right away, but he didn’t. His thoughts were with someone else.
“Whisky, neat,” the stranger said. It was a statement, not a request.
“We’ve got plenty of whisky.” Lachlan rubbed a nonexistent spot out of an already sparkling glass. “Which would you like?”
“Whatever’s most expensive.”
Lachlan chuckled to himself as he reached for the highest shelf.
“Something funny?”
“Not at all,” he said as he popped the cork from the bottle and turned to face his guest. “We just don’t get that answer much around here.”
The man cast a glance toward where Hannah, Andrew, and Douglas sat playing cards by the fire and teasing each other gently. “Obviously.”
Lachlan already couldn’t wait to never see the man again. He pushed the glass across the polished wood. The stranger took a sip.
He held the glass up to the light. “At least this place has one thing going for it.”
Lachlan raised an eyebrow. “First time in town, then?”
“First and last.”
“What brought you?”
The man contemplated the glass with sudden nonchalance, all traces of coldness replaced by a charm and ease. “A girl. I’m here to bring her home.”
Then he knew, and Lachlan felt a great caving in his chest. The accent, the affect, the way he’d answered. This had to be the man Deli was actually in love with. This was Trey Evans.
Lachlan cleared his throat. “A girl?”
“What else?” Trey’s mouth curled up to reveal too-white teeth.
Lachlan could hear his heartbeat in his ears. “Who’s the lucky lady?”
“She’s my best friend,” Trey replied, setting the glass down on the bar and meeting Lachlan’s eyes. “She makes me a better man.”
“Sounds like one of a kind.” Lachlan saw Hannah look up from where she sat and go still.
“Well, yeah, in a way. But this is the girl I just broke up with to come here.”
Trey thrust his phone toward Lachlan. A girl who couldn’t have been older than twenty-two stared at the camera in a sultry pout, draped in a barely there dress that Lachlan could not imagine a single woman on earth moving comfortably in.
“See?” Trey said. “Hot.”
“But like you said,” Lachlan said, holding back the torrent of dislike and dread, “nothing compares to the real thing.”
Trey sighed. “Yeah, ‘love.’” He rolled his eyes, and Lachlan wanted to pluck them out of his face. “I just thought I had a little more time before I had to settle down with the one with the good personality, you know what I mean?”
Of all the times in his life that another man had assumed Lachlan would happily participate in the shared degradation of women because none were present, none had made him angrier than the man Deli was in love with referring to her as “the one with the good personality.”
He wanted to reach over the bar and stop Trey’s talking with his hands around his neck. At the very least, he wanted to throw him out, heavy emphasis on the throw, but he couldn’t. This was the man she loved. Lachlan had already hurt her enough.
It wasn’t for him to decide.
“Can’t say that I know what you mean, no.” Lachlan’s fingers twitched toward a fist. “Why now?”
“Huh?”
“Why ‘settle’ now?”
Trey drained his glass. He tapped the rim while he gave a little chuckle, but his eyes were hard and sharp. “Can I get some service over here?”
Lachlan reached for the bottle.
“She left me.” Trey sighed as Lachlan twisted the cork.
“Just ran off one day to this godforsaken place.” Lachlan began to pour.
“I thought . . . I mean, I knew she was sort of in love with me, so I thought she’d be around.
But then she boarded a plane to Scotland, of all places, and now she’s stopped answering me entirely. Won’t take my calls.”
Lachlan looked up. “She won’t?”
“Jesus, man!” Trey shoved away from the bar as a pool of whisky trickled off the edge.
Lachlan wiped at the spill with a towel and tipped the overflowing glass into the sink. “My mistake,” he said as he slid it back toward Trey. “It’s on the house.”
Trey stood across from Lachlan, staring. The air got tight. Waiting.
“What did you say your name was? Something about you is . . . familiar.”
Lachlan held his gaze. “I get that a lot.”
Trey’s mouth twitched up. He sipped and spat back into the full glass.
“Sorry, friend.” Trey set the soiled whisky down and plucked a thistle out of the bud vase on the bar. “I’ve got a date.” Then he turned and walked out into the drizzling gray.
Hannah stood and crossed her arms over her chest.
“I know,” Lachlan said. “But it’s not up to me.”
Andrew gestured at the glass still swirling with the thick contents of Trey’s mouth. “That was a good bit of whisky.”
“Nah. I keep a bottle of the cheapest swill on the top shelf. He didn’t even notice.” Lachlan dumped it in the sink.
He held his shaking hand out in front of him and flexed it once, twice. He couldn’t believe he was letting that man go to the woman he loved. Lachlan pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, fighting back the panic. He should warn her about who Trey really was, but what if she already knew?
What if that was what Deli thought she deserved?
Strong fingers wrapped around either wrist and pulled gently.
“Hannah, please, I—” he began, but he fell quiet as she touched his cheek. She held out her sketchbook, flipping past a pretty strawberry blonde woman with orange nail polish, an old man sunning on a beach, and a puppy. Then she opened to a drawing of Deli the night she’d first sat in his pub.
The night Hannah had chosen Lachlan’s deepest desire to draw. The night Lachlan had fallen in love.
His throat was too tight to do anything but whisper. “She doesn’t want me.”
Hannah tore the page from the rest, folded it into a square, and tucked it in Lachlan’s shirt pocket. As the sketch found a home above his heart, Lachlan swore he felt it spark.